Rock the Bells Tour
(3 1/2 stars)
December 17, Empire Ballroom For $40, you got to see an impressive list of getting-their-groove-back hip-hoppers: Brooklyn bullies Smif-N-Wessun, freestyle god Supernatural, thinking man's rapper Pharoahe Monch, Wu-Tang dynamic duo Raekwon and Ghostface and "sky-high-artist" weedhead Reggie Noble (né Redman).
Perhaps if I was high (for the record, management, I don't do drugs) Smif-N-Wes' pedestrian set might've been more enjoyable. While this was a hip-hop crowd—as ethnically diverse as a U.N. meeting; socially diverse, too, B-boys mixed with street cats, nerds with hoodlums—few knew the words to any of the duo's joints. More enjoyable would've been having the entire Boot Camp Clik in for a mic-ripping session (in the '90s, dudes were a Brooklyn version of Wu-Tang with all their acts, including Black Moon and Heltah Skeltah). Same for Pharoahe Monch's brief set: Heads bounced and lips moved only to the catchy "Simon Sez" and his tune from the Training Day soundtrack.
Mount Eerie, December 19. Billed as a formal affair, Tuesday night's Mount Eerie and friends show could scarcely have felt less so. Though attendees were encouraged to dress up for the event, the 35 or so fans of indie folk who found their way to Denny & Lee Magic Studio were mostly bundled in warm pants and hooded overcoats, as they watched the string of performers take the small stage in the shop's ramshackle, heat-free back room. "My band's Mount Eerie, but I'm just a dude sitting here, so you can call me Phil," principal Phil Elverum remarked during a conversational, low-key solo set that saw him abort Microphones request "I Want Wind to Blow" in favor of more current material. The sniffling Elverum explained that he was coming down with a cold, as was his wife, Geneviève Castrée (aka Woelv), who capped the night with a gripping but far-too-short one-song turn of her own. Opener Adrian Orange (aka Thanksgiving) seemed far less affected by the chilly conditions, bouncing on flip-flopped feet as he encouraged audience participation and infused his compositions with off-kilter charm and strange whimsy. Spencer Patterson |
Further proving that great lyricists don't necessarily make great performers, Raekwon ripped through several solo joints and, midway through, invited Ghost to drop a rhyme or three from his new album, More Fish—hard to tell if they were good the way he screamed into the mic. But what got the slowly thinning crowd hyped were Wu classics like "C.R.E.A.M." and "Ice Cream." Combustible as he is, Redman's show was surprising and disturbing; the former because he has more hits you realize and the latter because he only did first verses of joints like "How to Roll a Blunt," "Time for Some Axion" and "I'll Bee Dat!" and, secondly, he smoked a fan's blunt. I was raised to not eat anybody's food because you don't know what "special" ingredients it might have. That should go double for weed.
No amount of herb could've dulled enthusiasm for Supernatural's set. He killed it—from "Three Words," where he incorporated words thrown out by fans into a song, to rhyming about what people handed to him (debit card, pen, handkerchief, bottled water). Supe freestyled on the phrase "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," deftly mimicked Busta Rhymes and played himself and Biggie Smalls in a play-styled rap. He alone was worth the price of admission.